The
Esquire Lounge is an archetypal venue: a pure urban jazz club, on the
‘circuit’, right down on Euclid Avenue between the steel mills to the west and
Western Reserve University to the east.
The club’s sign has martini glasses jiggling in neon pink and
green. Every time Aaron sees it, he
senses that some day it will be a priceless artifact in a museum, “Esquire
Lounge” and its dancing long-stemmed martini glasses being studied by serious
observers of semiotics and folk art.
Zoot and the boys have f inished a
week’s engagement at the Jazzland Grill in Columbus. The drive to Cleveland is a little over two hours. It is a perfect example of Zoot's genius for
scheduling gigs in different cities yet avoiding the road fatigue that can turn
a musician's life into a nightmare.
Before checking into the hotel, before
doing anything, Zoot wants to see old friends and examine the new soundboard at
the Esquire. The gig is going to be recorded for Blue Note Records. Rumors are flying in the jazz world that the
new band is something special, that Zoot has found a pair of
"monsters", as they are called, to back him up as he plays his distinctive
bop'n'blues style. For Aaron and Tyrone,
it is their debut. Downbeat Magazine is
going to review the record, it will be written up by critics like Leonard
Feather and Nat Hentoff.
It's big. It's important. The album
is going to be called “Hot Sax”.
Zoot enters the club majestically,
placing his feet on the carpet as if he is dancing, doing his lanky walk, all
his joints subtly undulating.
“What’s up, buttercup?,” he inqures of
the man sitting on a stool behind the bar.
There are five or six people in the club, nursing drinks and chatting
quietly. Two women spread white cotton
tablecloths below the bandstand.
“Zoot motherfucking Prestige!” says
the club’s proprietor, “What is
happenin’?” He puts out his cigarette and comes sailing from behind the bar, a
tall fat man with a medium afro. He does a series of finger snaps and arcane
handshakes with Zoot, then embraces him with a huge laugh.
Aaron knows these sounds and gestures;
they are the greeting rituals of adult black males. They are tunes of loose laughter, arms and hands swinging wide
and making noisy contact. The words
mean little. The tones of understanding
and recognition are everything. He tried, for a while, to imitate this hip
black language. He felt
ridiculous. What kind of spectacle must
he be? A “white Negro”. What’s that nasty term? A “Wigger”?
Does he want to be a slang term?
Wait, let’s not forget the Jew. What
is he? A Nigyid? A Yidgro?
Oh God, he’s a Yigger! No, he
will speak the way he speaks, act the way he acts, just as he is.
Zoot does quick introductions. The club’s owner is Hilton Stubbs. When Aaron is introduced, Stubbs looks at
him coldly. Then, as if Aaron doesn’t
exist, Stubbs points to him and inquires of Zoot, “What is this?”
Zoot bristles. “What do you mean, ‘what is this?’,
motherfucker. This is my drummer.”
“This is a white kid from Shaker
Heights, man, this won’t go down.”
“Hilton, you don’t know shit.” Zoot extends a protective arm around Aaron’s
shoulders. “You wanna cancel the
gig?” Zoot picks up his saxophone
case. “I can tell Blue Note we ain’t
playin’ here. I’ll go talk to Alvin at
Loose End and I’ll have my ass another gig.”
“Naw, shit man, I won’t do that; but I
don’t believe no white kid can play drums with Zoot Prestige and sound like the
real deal.”
“Why don’t you talk to him like he’s
here in front of you, fool?”
Stubbs looks at Aaron. “Hmmmph.” He lights a cigarette languidly,
sizing Aaron up. “Zoot is legendary for being able to find monstrous drummers
but I'm havin' a hard time taking you seriously. You can’t be more than fucking twenty years old, kid. What do you know about soul?”
Aaron shrugs. “Gig starts at nine. You’ll find out.”
At that moment, several other people
come from the back of the club, see Zoot and the greeting rituals are
repeated. Aaron is ignored or treated
to a cold stare, a lingering gaze of contempt and then a dismissive de-focusing
of the eyes, as if he has simply vanished.
Traveling with Zoot on the circuit, he has gotten a lot of racist attitude.
He lets it bounce off him. He knows
that later things will be different.
The equipment has to be unloaded and
set up. There is already a Hammond
organ and a Leslie speaker on the stage. Tyrone helps Aaron with the
drums. At half past five, the recording
crew arrives, hauling in a big Ampex eight track recorder in a wheeled
case. Aaron is miked just above his
head and in front of his bass drum.
Zoot gets a single mike, Tyrone gets two, and two mikes are placed at
strategic points on the stage. By six
thirty the instruments are assembled and a sound check completed. The band and the recording crew order a few
slabs of the Esquire’s legendary barbecue and drink a few beers.
Zoot leads his band to the Hotel Onyx,
next door, where they check in. Zoot
has a room. Tyrone and Aaron share a
room. They shower, shave, lay on their
respective beds and relax.
Aaron falls asleep. At eight o clock, Tyrone shakes him
awake. He has a familiar, crazed look
on his face, as if he's about to do something naughty.
“Hey man, check this out.” Tyrone holds two sugar cubes in his
palm. They resemble pistils at the
center of the long mocha petals of his fingers. Tyrone’s digits are like the tentacles of a carnivorous plant.
Aaron sits up. Outside the window of the room, a neon sign
is going bing! bop! bing! bop!
Rooms! Hotel Onyx! Rooms!
Hotel Onyx!
“Aw shit, what is that?’’ Aaron rubs his face, yawns.
“Hee hee. Owsley acid. The
purest.” Tyrone is full of mad
mischief. His eyes seem to melt and harden
like molten glass. Aaron loves him,
loves his playing, loves his daring. He
is virtually illiterate, dropped out of school in the fourth grade, but he is a
thinker, a philosopher, a musical intellect.
“Owsley acid. It’s always Owsley acid. How do you know it isn’t bathtub PCP? With all the shit I just went through being
white, you want me to take a psychedelic and play a gig?”
“I am Tyrone Terry, man, THE Tyrone
Terry. Nobody twacks bullshit dope on
me. I will kill them with my lethal B
flat. What the fuck, man, it’s not like
you aint done it before. Here.” He hands a cube to Aaron, then sucks the
remaining cube into his mouth. His
cheeks dent inward so that the goatee on his chin goes down like a sword
blade. Behind his glasses his eyes are
like the fires of a kiln. Aaron eats
the cube with a tiny twist of fear. He
knows taking a psychedelic is like going for a ride on a tiger’s back. It ccan connect him to the primal power; or
it can turn on him and eat him alive.
He will risk it.
Having made this commitment, Aaron now
has other preparations to make. He wishes he hadn’t eaten the barbecue. It sits in his guts like a greasy
snake. No matter, he will sweat it off. He sits in a quiet corner of the room,
putting himself into lotus position.
There is a terror of annihilation in him, residue from other psychedelic
experiences. He has learned to let go
of himself, has even learned to function, to play music, to walk around in the
‘ordinary’ world of people. It is the
initial phases of the drug rush that are the most difficult. Suddenly, one finds
oneself….utterly….without significance, lost in a vastness beyond vastness, so
that the personality of Aaron Kantro is some kind of silly joke. It is this silly joke that Aaron has learned
to dismiss with a figurative wave of his hand.
What does it matter if I matter?
Move forward into the risk, take the grotesque with the beautiful, take
it all. Inhale and exhale universes
with each breath.
Aaron hears Tyrone settle down beside
him. Yoga is something Aaron has
imparted to his friend, only to discover that Tyrone has a natural ability to
settle into a deep silence. He is,
perhaps, less intellectually encumbered.
Whatever the reason, Tyrone is a natural yogi, he meditates and conjures
mind exercises of stunning imagination.
Zoot will come to fetch them at
quarter to nine. The young men must don
their tuxedoes. The drug is working,
beginning as they meditate, stretching their imagery into an immense hall in
which they can hear one another’s thoughts like echoes from walls of a
cave.
“We got a gig,” Aaron reminds Tyrone
as he uncurls his legs. Tyrone opens
his eyes slowly, and they are like search lights being uncovered, a mighty glow
emits from their orbs. Pulling
themselves into the mundane world, the musical brothers dress and look at their
reflections in the mirror, giggling.
“Be cool, be cool, “ Tyrone admonishes, sinking his head between his
shoulders as if to mimic stealth. “The
Zoot will be wise to this, and he won’t be happy if we’re melting.”
“Promise I won’t melt,” Aaron
confirms. He is serious, he knows he
has a responsibility to his mentor to behave and play like a professional jazz
musician.
Zoot enters the room, sits in the one
easy chair and lets both legs splay over the chair’s arm rest.. He brings out his little pouch and crumples
some weed into the corncob pipe. He
examines his compatriots with an air of suspicion, but he has seen this before
and has a measure of faith in his sidemen.
“Dudes look good,” he sayes. “Feelin alright? Tight? Outtasight?”
“Just fine, Zoot. Lookin’ forward to it, “ Tyrone
replies. Aaron nods agreement.
Zoot eyes his sidemen
speculatively. “Gonna get cosmological
on me? Gonna do Coltrane riffs?” This is one of Zoot’s cautionary admonitions. He loves John Coltrane but knows his bread
and butter, knows what the patrons of the Esquire Club have come to hear: stompin’ blues shoutin bop-till-you-drop
tenor saxophone organ trio music.
“Don’t you trust us, Zoot? We know the gig.” Aaron’s hands are rattling complex drum patterns on his
kneecap. Warming up.
“There’s something about you two,
tonight. You’re glittering a little
bit.” It is impossible to tell whether
or not he winks, because when he wants to, Zoot can wink but not wink. Aaron suspects he has winked. The saxophonist lights the pipe and
inhales. Then he loads it again and
passes it to Aaron. “I will righteously
appreciate some discipline from you young monsters. Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on here. This ain’t speculative fiction. This is the Kingdom of Funktonics. Aaron, you gotta stay inside the groove and
let these Black Nationalist motherfuckers know you can play some shit.”
“We will play some shit,” Tyrone
affirms, making it sound like a solemn oath. Aaron repeats it. “We will play some shit.”
Each of them has the requisite two
hits of weed, enacting the pre-set ritual that is as much a part of their
working life as their instruments and their PA system. They head down the long stairs with its
purple carpeting, into the foyer with its thousands of tiny hexagonal tiles and
green trim. Euclid avenue is a parade
of horsepower vanity. Caddies,
Continentals and Grand Prix convertibles gurgle toward the traffic lights. A bit of rain has fallen and the smell of
wet pavement and gasoline fumes mingle in the air. Reflections from neon lights bounce up from the sidewalks. Aaron inhales and marvels at the wild beauty
of the world.
They walk around to the kitchen
entrance of the club. Zoot gives a
signal to Hilton Stubbs. The proprietor
nods and goes to the bandstand. It is a
good house. The tables are taken. The bar is already two rows deep. The recording engineers are perched at their
boards like alchemists over tables of potions and unguents
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Stubbs says
into the microphone. “The Club Esquire
is honored to present the reigning Master of Funk, the Prestigious One, The
Zoot with the roots and his smokin’ recruits,
the one and only…… Zoot….. Pres…..tige!”
They come through the swinging door
and make their procession to the bandstand. When the applause and whistles die
down, Zoot looks at Tyrone and Aaron, snaps his fingers and counts off a
blistering tempo for “All the Things You Are”.
They are off! Tyrone’s organ vamps behind Zoot’s solo like butter rolling
down a split yam. Aaron is crisp as a
new hundred dollar bill. The stick in
his right hand comes down on the ride cymbal almost lazily; just enough behind
the beat to give it tension, to make that indefinable suspense that is the
elusive quality of swing. He pop pops
with his left hand on the snare, talking to Zoot’s cadences. It is a glory. It is jazz.
They play Monk’s tune, “Well You
Needn”t. Then, to slow things down,
Zoot calls for “Angel Eyes”. That’s
when the LSD begins working at its full intensity. Tyrone plays the dark moody chords of the song. Its story is that of an urban barroom drama,
of souls sliding toward damnation but gripping their humanity with ferocious
desperation. When Tyrone’s solo comes,
he lands on one of those blue tones that the organ can sustain forever, while
his right hand trills and trills pure funkiness. It is musical laughter.
Aaron’s smile grows larger than his face, a Cheshire Cat grin where the
rest of him disappears into the curling lips and glowing teeth. Zoot rocks his horn and arches his
back. The audience is screaming
approval. The walls start to melt. Hilton Stubbs looks like a goat or a devil,
behind the bar, smiling so that his gold tooth flashes across the room. Tyrone glances at Aaron, wicked sly wit
oozing from his eyes.
Stay inside, Aaron mentally
signala. Don’t get crazy. Tyrone nods. Don’t worry; I can get crazy and still stay inside. They are IT. They are tradition. They
are milking all the conventions, all the known things of jazz. Tyrone arpeggioes to get to the head of the
tune. It is like ocean waves, surf
rolling in perfect cylinders toward the shore.
Zoot hears the cue and they restate the brooding melodrama of Angel
Eyes. The tune ends in a splash of
cymbals, organ and saxophone.
Perfect.
Zoot knows what's happening but says nothing. As long as they play well he will let it
slide. He can’t sit on these two young
horses. He can go with them, out to the
boundary. If he feels them slipping
off, he will give them the infamous Zoot Stare. If he can keep them right there, right at the boundary but still
within the vocabulary, the vocabulary itself will become the realm of
exploration.
It works. It works all night. At
one moment, Aaron takes a drum solo and feels his arms multiply, feels as if
four right hands and four left hands are striking and bouncing off the drums
with incredible speed. He is a Hindu
God, he is eight-armed Ganesh, the elephant god, the lord of Jupiter. He rolls and crackles and flames but keeps
it together, never gets abstract, hits the One, the downbeat, right where he is
supposed to.
There isn’t anyone in the room who is
wondering if Aaron can play drums. There isn’t anyone in the room who is
thinking about black or white, soul or without soul, paid dues, ain’t paid
dues, hipness or squareness.
There is only the miracle of music.
